


Night

by infinite_diversity



Series: Dark Silence [3]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Dilaudid, Drug Abuse, F/M, Fear and Loathing, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Revelations, Romance, The Big Game, Tobias Hankel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_diversity/pseuds/infinite_diversity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of 'Revelations', the team spends a night in a hotel in Georgia. Reid is close to an emotional breakdown, and JJ tries to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night

Like the rest of the hotel, his room was old-fashioned and everything had a slightly used look to it, but it was clean and looked very inviting. 

It all seemed eerily surreal to Reid. One second he was digging his own grave and shooting people, and merely a moment later he was here in this comfortable bedroom, taking a shower and going to sleep. Just a normal day. 

Reid had no idea how to process all this information, these new feelings. He was used to being the fastest one when it came to mental abilities, but this was so different from everything. Nobody had ever really taught him how to deal with things emotionally. His mother certainly hadn't, and neither had Hotch or Gideon. Reid broke problems down to math and science, but this? 

He didn’t know how to feel. He was pretty sure about how he had felt over the last two days – terrified, scared to death, desperate. But what now? He knew he should be relieved, and in a way, he was. But what was he going to do when the emotional digesting began? He knew there would be flashbacks and nightmares. He would be irritable, unable to focus and unable to sleep. Classic PTSD. 

But right now, Reid just felt tired and lethargic. His mind was like a deep lake, but he couldn’t get through the smooth, unsuspicious surface – not yet. Like a machine, he went into the bathroom and took a quick shower, trying to get rid of the dirt and the horrid smell of the fish guts Raphael had burnt. The small suitcase he had packed for their trip to Georgia five days ago had obviously been brought to his room. Running completely on autopilot, he undressed. Just when he was about to put on his pajamas, he felt two small, hard objects in the left pocket of the pants he had worn. 

His heart beat faster as he pulled the two bottles of heroin out.  
He noticed that his hands were shaking. The clear liquid seemed to smile at him invitingly. This is crazy, he thought. He was a federal agent, he was the good guy. He needed to get rid of this poison. But where? He couldn’t exactly throw it in the bin, could he? What if somebody saw it there? Maybe he could just keep it. Only until he’d figured out what to do with it, of course. And not a second longer.

Carefully, he put the two bottles into his messenger bag. Not a second longer.

A few minutes later he was lying under the white lavender-scented sheets of his bed, staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t turned off the dim light on the right bedside table – a luxury he usually didn’t allow himself, but at the moment he felt too tired to care. So, he didn’t like the darkness. What was there to it?

“I’m not weak.”

“I know, honey.”

The memory made him shiver as if somebody had poured cold water down his back. It was still so clear and vivid, and he silently cursed his brain for it. Of course he had always remembered scenes of his childhood. But it had never felt as real as it had yesterday, and it was still burnt into his retinas as if he had actually seen it and not hallucinated due to a mixture of painkillers and psychedelics. 

He rubbed his eyes and rolled onto his side. Please, don’t let the insomnia start just yet, he silently begged. He hadn’t slept in three days, and he wanted to feel better tomorrow, not worse. He wanted to be fine enough to make the others believe he was able to do his job. For him, there was nothing worse than being thought weak.

Tobias’ face had looked so young and innocent after Reid had shot him. Freed of Charles and Raphael, Tobias was nothing but a little boy. It wasn’t his fault. Through the fog of pain and heroin, it hadn’t been that easy to see, but now Reid was sure. Tobias couldn’t be blamed. His team? Never. JJ? Not in a billion years.  
Himself, then? After all, he had split up with JJ. He had actually been that stupid. 

But if this were the price of stupidity, Reid thought, their team would constantly have to save his old classmates from some seriously whacked sadists. 

The only thing that could be blamed was a goddamned mental illness. Just the way it had always been for him. 

Reid didn’t want to think anymore. Instead, he began to focus on the pain in his body. There was his foot - completely covered in bruises and small wounds where the flesh had burst under Charles’ vicious strikes. Secondly, his stomach ached, seemingly unhappy that it had not been fed in three days. His chest hurt as well, his ribs protesting against every too-deep breath because of the forceful CPR Tobias had given him, saving his life after Charles had almost taken it.

The CPR, he remembered. I was actually dead for over a minute. And it felt so great. 

If you looked at it like a scientist - the way Reid looked at most things - maybe calling an ambulance wouldn’t have been the worst idea. After all, my heart actually stopped beating. My lungs stopped breathing, my brain stopped receiving oxygen. Instead of horrified, Reid found himself thrilled at the thought. He was a man of thought, not of action, and up until now he had felt strangely detached from his body, as if it was nothing but a machine that could be satisfied with large amounts of coffee. 

His head was throbbing on every side from the many blows it had sustained.  
But the worst pain came from the inside of his right elbow. He didn’t bother looking at it, didn’t want to see the pink little holes in his skin. They felt hot and cold at the same time, itching and burning and demanding more. He covered them with his left hand.  
“Stop,” he whispered into the warm air, “stop, please just stop…”


End file.
